An integrated computational intelligence approach to product concept generation and evaluation

Product concept generation and evaluation are two major activities for obtaining an optimal concept in conceptual design. In this paper, an integrated computational intelligence approach is proposed for dealing with these two aspects. A group of satisfactory concepts are generated first by using genetic algorithm and incorporating the information from knowledge base. Then concept evaluation and decision making are implemented using fuzzy neural network to obtain an optimal concept. Our procedure of using computational intelligence in conceptual design is described. The key issues in implementing the proposed approach are discussed, and finally the applicability of the proposed method is illustrated with an engineering example. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.